


Hearts Break, They Bend, They Mend

by revenblue



Series: but you keep spinning 'round me just the same [37]
Category: Phineas and Ferb
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Ambiguous Relationships, Angst, M/M, POV Alternating, POV Third Person Limited, this is basically a series of vignettes that fit around canon events, vaguely canon compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-12
Updated: 2017-12-11
Packaged: 2018-09-08 02:31:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8826919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/revenblue/pseuds/revenblue
Summary: If there was one thing Heinz Doofenshmirtz was familiar with, it was pain.





	1. It's The Worst Kind Of Pain I've Known

**Author's Note:**

> Serious regrets for not posting this as soon as I'd finished, haha. (Which, by the file data, was mid-NaNoWriMo.)
> 
> It only took... two and a half months to write, wow.
> 
> UPDATE: changed title since I'm definitely adding more chapters later. (Chapters 2 and 3 are WIP right now whoops ^_^; Hopefully they don't take too long?)

If there was one thing Heinz Doofenshmirtz was familiar with, it was pain.

His parents had hated him, even before his soulmark showed up.

And once it did, the entire village looked at him with disdain and scorn.

 

It wasn't _his_ fault his soulmark was an unpronounceable string of letters. Not like his brother Roger's, with its perfect grammar.

And it had to be on his arm too, where everyone could see it.

 

After an unlucky series of incidents (par for the course, really), he found himself living with ocelots in the forest.

His ocelot family didn't care what his soulmark was. He was one of the cubs regardless.

So far as he could tell, they didn't have soulmarks at all.

 

It couldn't last. He was dragged back to be a lawn gnome again, his mother explaining that it was the best he could do with his mess of a soulmark.

 

If he was honest with himself, it was a relief to lose the arm.

He could just make himself a new one, again.

 

It was surprisingly freeing to not have his (unpronouncable, unreadable, meaningless) soulmark on display.

People took one look at him and assumed he'd never had one in the first place. Sure, the occasional pitying looks were grating, but it was still better than the outright scorn he'd (almost) grown used to.

 

When he'd met Charlene, she'd remarked on his lack of a soulmark, before saying that she didn't have one either.

His loneliness won out, and he let the explanation of his lost arm die unspoken. Maybe they could make something together, despite fate.

 

Fate won.

He didn't, he _couldn't_ watch, as Charlene walked out of his life, taking Vanessa with her.

(He knew it wasn't forever, but he'd always had a flair for the dramatic.)

 

He'd turned back to building complicated devices, in the wake of the divorce.

All the anger and pain from the last few decades of his life, all the grief of what he'd lost before it was even in sight, he poured it all into his work.

 

It hadn't taken long for OWCA to take notice.

Sure, they sent rookies, but who was he to complain? He'd finally found his purpose in life.

(Who cared about his soulmark anyway? Not him. Not. Him.)

 

Time passed in a blur. Before he knew it, it was time to update his ID photos.

Fast forward to now: standing outside the photo shop, new photo (finally a good one) clutched in his hands.

 

The back of his neck prickled. Someone was watching him.

He turned around, to see an OWCA-issued fedora disappearing behind the mailbox.

He grinned to himself. This wasn't just an ordinary thwarting. He was enough of a threat to get his own nemesis!

 

He looked down at the platypus in front of him, then back at the business card in his hand. "Perry the Platypus?"

Perry the Platypus nodded slowly.

"You're my nemesis?"

Perry the Platypus made a strange sound, partway between a growl and a purr.

He knew that sound. He'd spent years trying to pronounce it, never knowing what the original sounded like.

And now he knew.

Something broke inside him and he sank to the floor. Tears formed in his eyes, but he scrubbed them away with the back of one hand. (The one that had had the soulmark on the arm, part of his mind reminded him.)

"I-I'm sorry, Perry the Platypus, I'm not normally like this..."

Perry the Platypus (he was never going to forget that name) frowned at him.

He sat on the curb, arms resting on his knees, looking everywhere except at Perry as the platypus sat down beside him. "I used to think my soulmark meant nothing. It was a string of letters, what are the chances someone could say that exact thing? Hang on, I'll show you." He dug in his pockets for a pen. A few seconds later, he brandished an old ball-point pen. "Look at this, Perry the Platypus," he said, pushing his sleeve up and writing on the artificial skin of his arm. "See that? That's what you said to me, that was my soulmark- I lost it, a while back, nothing major- so, you're my soulmate!" He grinned at the platypus.

Perry gave him a flat look.

He shrank in on himself. "Do you have a soulmark, Perry the Platypus? Mama Ocelot didn't, she was, you know, an ocelot obviously, is it different for platypuses? Platypi? What's the plural form of 'platypus' anyway?"

Perry rolled his eyes and stood up.

"No wait, where are you going, Perry the Platypus? Don't go, I..." He trailed off, face falling.

Perry stopped and turned back towards him, picked up the fallen business card and plucked the pen out of his grip, and scrawled a short message on the back of the card. That done, the platypus saluted and left.

The card now had "tmrw 0900" written on it.

"It's a date," he murmured to himself, smiling.

He jumped up and raced back to his building, taking the stairs three at a time in his excitement. If he wanted to impress his new nemesis (soulmate), there was no time to lose.


	2. And Let That Mistake Pass On

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eight months later, I'm back with part 2. Finally.  
> Hopefully it was worth the wait? ^_^;
> 
> (Also this is now listed as shipfic rather than friendshipfic but it's still pretty ambiguous. Feel free to interpret it however you want, as it's vaguely canon-compliant still.)

If there was one thing Perry the Platypus was sure of, it was that a nemesisship was ~~supposed to be~~ a business relationship only.

So why did it hurt so much to know Doctor D was fighting someone else?

He should have expected this. It was ridiculous to feel like this was a betrayal. And yet...

Despite himself, he'd sympathised with Doctor D. He'd gotten emotionally invested in his (former) nemesis's wellbeing, despite the mantra running through his head:

"Don't get attached."

 

He'd had the same mantra when his boys adopted him. That had been a lost cause within a week.

~~Why had he expected anything different here?~~

 

It had been hard, keeping a professional distance when every monologue, every backstory, had an undercurrent of desperate loneliness. When Doctor D had made it personal right from the start.

 

Before they'd fought, that first time, when he'd gone to introduce himself, Doctor D had mentioned a soulmark.

Perry knew what soulmarks were. It was a common topic at the Flynn-Fletcher household. But they were only for humans... right? And he wasn't a human, he was a platypus. An OWCA agent, thus an animal by definition, and animals didn't have soulmarks. So _he_ shouldn't have a soulmark.

It wasn't supposed to happen.

 

He stared up at the window of Better Panda Restaurant. The name of it felt like a punch to the gut, only worse.

Maybe Peter the Panda really _was_ a better nemesis for Doctor D.

Or maybe...

Maybe Doctor D had lied about his soulmark. He was an evil scientist, lying is par for the course there.

 

Perry wondered if he had told Peter the Panda the same soulmark story. The other agent wouldn't believe him, he thought. Who in their right mind would claim an animal was their soulmate?

 

But Doctor D _had_. And even if it was a lie... Perry had believed him. And, curse him - no, not curse, that was too painful - darn him, he still did.

~~Maybe he was just too gullible.~~

 

As hard as he'd tried not to, he'd _liked_ his (former) nemesis. Thwarting him was always ~~dare he say it~~ _enjoyable_. And as baffling as his schemes were, the man could _fight_. Perry even liked the occasional musical numbers. So for Doctor D to just throw that away like it didn't matter, like _Perry_ didn't matter, that hurt.

 

He sighed and pressed his hands over his eyes. He'd have to talk to OWCA about retiring, or at the very least some time off active duty; he couldn't face another evil scientist like this. Not when he was this ~~hung up on Doctor D~~ emotionally compromised.

 

And he had to make sure his family wouldn't notice anything wrong. They were generally unobservant, something he'd been thankful for a few times already, but it never hurt to be cautious.

 

The long walk home should clear his head, he thought.

* * *

He reached the closest dedicated base entrance half an hour later, still trying, and failing, to not think about Doctor D. So much for clearing his head.

His (former) nemesis's actions were starting to sink in. Doctor D had _dumped him_.

 

The elevator was as quiet as the walk had been, and lonelier. When he reached the bottom he stepped out into the large room, ignoring the screen with the frozen Major Monogram still watching, and crossed to a display stand in the corner, pulling off his hat. The fedora felt heavy in his hands, weighted down with responsibility and memories. He took a deep breath and set it on the pedestal. Hopefully Major Monogram would understand.

 

The screen behind him pulled at his mind, but he turned away, still refusing to look. Even the glimpse out of the corner of his eye brought back the thoughts of Doctor D, of being sent to stop him. Just like this morning, before-

 

He marched determinedly over to another base entrance before he could finish the thought, scanning through the list of destinations.

 

No one would be home, of course. They were still at the museum, and most likely hadn't even noticed him missing. He could probably get back there through OWCA's tunnels and see what the boys had found-

But if he did, he'd have to pretend nothing was wrong, and that was beyond him right now. And failing to do so would break ~~him~~ his cover. He couldn't handle losing them too.

 

It was easier just to wait for them to come back.

 

He could use the time to catch up on Sunrise Of Our Lives. It had been months since he'd had a free day off to watch even a single episode, and he was going to enjoy it.

But first, he needed a snack. He jabbed a thumb at the button for the kitchen. And what better snack than a pile of ice cream to bury his feelings under, specifially the half-tub of chocolate non-dairy ice cream Candace had abandoned in the back of the freezer last month. 

 

A few minutes later he was settling into the couch with his ice cream, glad he'd made it before it got too far into the episode.

Sunrise was always easy to pick up again, one of the reasons he loved it.

 

So, Jessica had an evil twin, with the exact same soulmark as she did. Enrique was thinking of proposing to his soulmate, who turned out to be Claude. Barbara had woken up from her coma and was now pregnant, and no one knew who the father was.

Enrique was just leaving the jewelery shop after looking at rings, when Jessica showed up. And kissed him. Perry paused, spoon halfway to his mouth. Enrique _wouldn't_.

Except he did. Sunrise always had to go for the most dramatic route.

Perry dropped the spoon back in the container and picked up the remote. He couldn't watch any more.

 

That was when the OWCA override kicked in, interrupting the show. Carl's face filled the screen, with the _still_ -frozen Major Monogram not quite out of view.

Apparently _Peter the Panda_ hadn't reversed Doctor D's inator yet. _Perry_ would have been done by now.

"Agent P?" Carl asked.

Perry slumped back against the couch, shoving the spoonful of ice cream into his beak. There went his ~~unsatisfying~~ day off. He shouldn't even respond, he wasn't Agent P right now, he'd taken the hat off. ~~He didn't know if he could ever bring himself to be Agent P again.~~ Right now he was just Perry the- just Perry.

"It's Doofenshmirtz."

Of course it was. The one thing Perry didn't want to think about right now. He flipped the channel back to Sunrise, determined to _forget_. Even if he had to ignore Enrique's plotline to do it.

The screen switched to Carl again, and Perry jabbed the button on the remote before the intern could get a word out. Couldn't he see how much Perry was hurting? The ice cream should have been a dead giveaway at the very least.

 

All he wanted was some time to himself, for once.

* * *

Eventually he ran out of both ice cream and episode, and everything ached again, like there was a gaping hole where his heart had been. Without Sunrise to take his mind off things, his thoughts drifted back to Doctor D, the way they always did. He'd never realised how empty his life would feel without the man as his nemesis. Not before he was gone.

The intro for the next show blared out from the tv. He let out a soft sigh of frustration, then shut the tv off and slid down from the couch. Might as well get a glass of water.

At least Carl had stopped trying to interrupt him while he was ~~wallowing~~ enjoying a rare day off. That was one thing he was thankful for.

His watch buzzed against his wrist. Spoke too soon. He glared down at it, a growl rising in his throat-

"Perry the Platypus!" Doctor D said from the tiny screen, waving.

Perry's stomach lurched at the sight of his neme- _former_ nemesis grinning at him like nothing was wrong, and it was all he could do to glare back.

How could Doctor D be so _cheerful_? How could he still smile after taking Perry's world out from underneath his feet?

On the screen, Doctor D's grin faded, and Perry could see the cracks in his facade. Something had changed. "I know we left off on a bad note," Doctor D continued, "but I thought maybe we could-"

Perry shook his head vehemently. No, he couldn't, he _wouldn't_ let Doctor D back into his life. Not even if the man pouted at him the way Perry knew he would. ~~Not even if they were soulmates like he'd said.~~

Doctor D's lip trembled. "At least give me a chance?"

Despite himself, Perry faltered. Maybe-

"Hey, I just realised, what happened to your hat?" Doctor D said, interrupting his thoughts. "You look so different without it, I never would have recognised you if I didn't know it was you-"

Perry shut off the watch. He didn't want to hear every single thought that went through Doctor D's mind, not right now. That was Peter the Panda's responsibility now.

But Doctor D was right, his head felt strangely bare without the fedora.

His watch beeped again. The screen, when he checked, showed only a place and a time:

"SSSN Studios, 1 hour"

* * *

The first thing he heard, upon walking into the studio for Dr Feelbetter, was Doctor D's voice. "Sheesh, Perry the Grumpapus, what's gotten into _you_?" Not even a greeting, or an apology, or anything that would imply he actually _cared_. If it wasn't for the way the man was twisting his fingers together and conspicuously avoiding eye contact, Perry would have been convinced that was all it was.

But no, he had to see the way Doctor D's thumb kept brushing against his wrist, where he'd said his soulmark had been, like he was tracing the letters out. Perry couldn't look away, ~~trapped~~ captivated by the sight.

 

The movements looked effortless, like a habit formed over a lifetime.

 

Doctor D shifted in his seat as the live audience began to file in, then carefully pulled his hands apart and set them on the armrests. Like he didn't want anyone else to see.

 

For the first time, Perry allowed himself to consider that maybe he wasn't exempt from having a soulmate. Animal or not.

 

It didn't change the fact that Doctor D had abandoned him to fight Peter the Panda instead, but if he was as serious about trying to _fix_ it as he'd been about the soulmark, then they could make this work.

And if there was one thing Perry knew, it was that that would make all the difference.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did not make up Sunrise Of Our Lives (or the characters mentioned), that was all Chaos_Valkyrie. I just borrowed it for this. ^_^;
> 
> Because this is a thing I'm doing now, have some songs.  
> Chapter titles from [Roads Untraveled](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFiNlLt8sJw) by Linkin Park.  
> Fic title from [One Left Standing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgeOTFZ5-V0) by Elemeno P.
> 
>  
> 
> ~~Any and all inconsistencies should be blamed on the fact I've been working on this for the last eight months, in between way too many other things.~~
> 
>  
> 
> ...Now I gotta start on part 3, don't I. (Which, because this is self-indulgent canon-compliant soulmate AU, will be vaguely TIYB-ish.)


	3. May Your Love Never End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hoo boy, This Is Your Backstory time, prepare for timeskips (and pov switches for once).

If there was one thing Heinz had learned, it was that even finding his supposed soulmate couldn't fix everything that was wrong with his life. No matter how much he wished otherwise, Perry the Platypus couldn't do it. Couldn't erase his backstories. Couldn't repair all the bridges he'd burned. (Couldn't make his mother love him.)

And he definitely hadn't gotten rid of the nightmares. Or the memories. (Sometimes he couldn't tell the difference, and that scared him.)

All of which meant that whenever he woke up in the middle of the night (more often than he'd care to admit), with a racing heart and a lingering image of a flesh-and-blood arm with no markings in sight (no soulmark at all) and no Perry the Platypus to take his mind off everything, all the old insecurities came flooding back.

He pulled his knees in tight, trying to control his breathing, hoping he could stave off the tears this time. Sometimes he couldn't. Those times were always the worst.

Either way, he knew it would be another sleepless night. One where he'd keep going over what he remembered of Perry the Platypus's voice, what he remembered of his soulmark, trying to match them together but losing the shape of them both. He'd been here before, too often to count.

But who cared about his soulmark? (He did. Of course he did.) It wasn't like it meant anything. (Then why was he crying?) Perry the Platypus didn't care that he'd lost it. (Did Perry the Platypus even care about him at all?)

He squeezed his eyes shut and dug his thumb into his arm, where the mark would have been, like he was trying to carve it back into the artificial skin. Anything to pretend he wasn't irreparably broken.

And to think, for a while (years, _decades_ ) he'd been glad to not see the mark, the reminder of how unwanted he was. But now it just... hurt, seeing bare skin where there _should_ be something more. A sign he hadn't made it all up. Anything to show that he meant _something_ to _someone_ for once in his life.

(Was that really so much to ask?)

He'd spent so much time alone, with only his thoughts for company (worthless useless _schnitzel_ ), waiting for someone to come along and... and make it all better. He'd thought Perry the Platypus could be that someone, that maybe things could be different now, except nothing had changed. But maybe that was _his_ fault, for not being good enough.

Or, what if he was _too_ Good? Perry the Platypus was his _nemesis_ , he expected a _scheme_ , and those had been somewhat lacklustre recently. He had to step things up, had to be _Evil_.

The words from his nightmare (memory?) ran through his head on a loop.

_True evil is born from pain and loss._

And he had both, didn't he? Sure, he'd always shied away from actually poking at the worst of it, but it was _there_. So if he was to be Evil, for realsies, what he needed to do was push himself past that point. _Then_ he could be the nemesis Perry the Platypus deserved.

He sat up, reaching for the blank blueprints he kept beside the bed for times like these. All it would take was an inator...

* * *

Perry had never been one for fear. In fact, he was certified Fearless. But when he looked at ~~the monster who used to be~~ his nemesis, searching for any sign of the man he knew, there wasn't any other way to describe the shiver going up his spine.

This was not the Doctor D he knew. That was what terrified him most, the thought of losing his ~~soulmate?~~ nemesis to _this_.

Even if nothing else changed, even if he was still sent on his daily thwarting mission to DEI, it wouldn't be the same.

 

He stood rooted to the floor, desperately wracking his brains for something, _anything_ , he could do to stop this.

Above him, Doctor D ~~or rather, the _thing_ that used to be Doctor D~~ bared his teeth in what Perry couldn't quite call a smile. It was too alien, too out of place on the face he'd grown so familiar with.

 

All at once he remembered another face that looked like Doctor D but wasn't. A different, crueller, Heinz Doofenshmirtz, clad in black with a heart to match.

He'd found that unsettling too, not recognising his nemesis in the man he was up against.

 

This was somehow worse.

 

Back then, _his_ Doctor D had been there too, mirroring his doppelganger. Right up until he wasn't. They'd had to run for their life after that, with Doctor D falling easily into place beside Perry like they'd been working together for decades, and that had been...

~~Was that a soulmate thing?~~

But here, now, his nemesis was _gone_ , replaced by a monster wearing his face.

 

The monster reached for him, claws wrapping around his small body. He struggled, finally able to move again, but he was _trapped_. All he could do was stare into Doctor D's face as he was lifted closer, searching for-

The familiar pain in his eyes.

What was it Doctor D had said before? "Evil is born from pain and loss."

It really was about the backstories, wasn't it? He'd known they were bad. That was why he'd heard any of them in the first place, because Doctor D wouldn't _need_ to talk about them if they didn't still bother him, but he hadn't been prepared for seeing them played out on the screen in high definition. Doctor D had looked so _young_.

 

If Perry looked, _really_ looked, he could still see traces of the terrified child Doctor D had been. They'd always been there, hidden behind a thin layer of bravado, and now further obscured by the monster he'd become, but they were _there_.

His nemesis was _hurting_ , and ~~even though part of it was his own darn fault for pushing himself so far~~ Perry couldn't leave him like that.

 

All he could do was show him how much he cared.

* * *

Heinz did actually feel better after talking about his backstories. It had been _cathartic_ to just let it all out for once. Not that monologuing in general wasn't cathartic, but there was something satisfying about literally mopping away the distilled essence of the pain and anger and resentment.

(And if he cried while scrubbing away the mess, well, that was just the chemicals wasn't it.)

 

A while later, once he'd washed off the last of the backstory and the lab looked... not _clean_ clean but as good as he was going to get it, he dropped into his armchair with a sigh. Emotional breakdowns were _exhausting_. Really took it out of a guy.

So, he'd decided he deserved something nice. A soft fluffy bathrobe fresh from the dryer, some almond brittle from his emergency stash (this counted as an emergency, right?), a night off from scheming...

He just wasn't up for building something just so it could be destroyed in the morning. Or writing a monologue Perry the Platypus wouldn't pay attention to. Or anything other than watching the latest episode of Collateral Damage Man: The Series to drown out his thoughts, really.

They weren't pleasant thoughts (they never were), and after the day he'd had he _needed_ a break from them.

Besides, last week's episode had ended on a cliffhanger.

 

Midway through the episode, just as Collateral Damage Man was about to confront Eponymous Character for his crimes, there was a knock at the door and he sighed. _Nice._ Perfect timing. And by that he meant horrible timing. The worst.

He got up anyway, groaning at how stiff his muscles were, and grumbled as he went to answer it. "This'd better be good, if I miss the good bit because of a canvasser again I will be _very_ \- Perry the Platypus? What are you doing here?"

Perry the Platypus stared up at him coolly, paws on his hips (did platypuses even have hips?), just barely casual enough for it to not be a business call.

Before the agent could respond, Heinz spoke again. "No wait, come in, you can tell me when the ads come on."

 

"So what's this about?" Heinz asked as the commercials started, turning to look at Perry the Platypus. "You don't _usually_ come over like this, I mean sometimes we make _plans_ but this wasn't planned, I would have remembered if it was-"

Perry the Platypus cut him off with a shrug before he could monologue himself into a corner again, then gestured at him.

Oh. Perry the Platypus was _worried_.

"What, me?" Heinz said, because why was Perry the Platypus worrying about _him_ of all people? "I'm _fine_ , Perry the Platypus, completely one hundred percent fine, I'll have a scheme ready for you tomo-" It wasn't working. He slumped, letting his fake smile fade under the weight of Perry the Platypus's stare. "No, you're right. I'm _exhausted_. Day after tomorrow?"

His nemesis (soulmate) remained unconvinced.

Despite himself, Heinz's throat tightened. "Just let me have this, Perry the Platypus, it gets so _lonely_ without you and-"

That's when Perry the Platypus hugged him. More of a tackle, really, but those adorable little arms wrapped around him an instant later so it counted as a hug. Or something similar anyway. He'd take it.

Besides, Perry the Platypus smelled like fur and pineapple shampoo and he'd never thought those would smell so nice together but they really did, or maybe it was just that they smelled like _Perry the Platypus_ , and either way he was hugging back and pressing his face into the soft fur and wondering if, just maybe, things could be alright.

And, hidden under Perry the Platypus's fur... "'Perry the Platypus'?"

Perry the Platypus pulled back to look him in the eyes, raising an eyebrow.

Heinz continued on, determined. "That's what it says, 'Perry the Platypus'! I didn't think you were the sort to tattoo your own name on yourself-"

There went the other eyebrow.

"It's not? Then what-"

Perry the Platypus rolled his eyes like Heinz was being obtuse again (an expression Heinz was very familiar with by now), then tapped at the side of Heinz's arm meaningfully.

When Heinz spoke again, it was quiet, _reverent_. "Your soulmark?"

He hadn't realised Perry the Platypus even had a soulmark. After all, the ocelots hadn't. And he'd been fine with that, it wasn't like he still had _his_ (just the memory of it but who knew how reliable _that_ was), so they'd matched. At least, he'd thought they did.

"You have a soulmark," Heinz continued, hating the bitter tone in his voice but unable to stop himself, "and you didn't tell me?" He shouldn't be _surprised_ , Perry the Platypus never _told_ him anything, but it still hurt to find out just how much had been kept from him.

How much of what he'd thought he'd known was real? Did he even know his nemesis at all?

Perry the Platypus growled at him, tiny paw still resting on his arm where his soulmark had been, and for the first time in a while he remembered what it was like to feel certain about his place in the world.

"Perry the Platypus," he began, bringing his other hand up to rest on his nemesis's shoulder, where his soulmark was. "I- Oh, it's back on."

He got a thumbs-up for that, and then Perry the Platypus was settling into his side and tucking a paw into his hand and smiling, and he'd never thought his nemesis could be so shockingly intimate. But his _soulmate_ could. After all, Perry the Platypus was off the clock.

They'd go back to normal in two days, of course, with Heinz scheming and Perry the Platypus thwarting him as always, but they were still soulmates, forever bound to each other. It was better than any trap Heinz could come up with.

And if there was one thing they both knew, it was that they could ( _would_ ) make things work, together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm finally done. It was a struggle at times, but I'm finally _done_ with this fic. Just under a year after I posted chapter 1. (My scheduling is terrible whoops.) But hey, it's a multichapter and it's _done_.  
>  And I can _finally_ abandon writing in html forever. (Long live markdown.)
> 
> ...I wouldn't be surprised if you could see the progress in my writing over the last year from this, tbh XD  
>  Because I feel like I've come a long way since then, even if it's slow and subtle.
> 
> Comments are appreciated, love you all~ ♥  
> (I love the lurkers too, don't worry. ♥)
> 
> And thank you to everyone who's come on this journey with me ♥


End file.
